Marion Harland's Complete Cook Book: A Practical and Exhaustive Manual of Cookery and Housekeeping

even teaspoonful of soda. Make a hole in the middle, pour in the sponge, and when the ingredients are thoroughly incorporated beat in half a cupful of molasses. Should the molasses thin the dough into a batter, add rye flour. Knead until it is as light as a rubber ball, set aside in a covered bread-bowl and let it rise six hours. Work ten minutes more, make into loaves, and when they are well up in the world bake in a slow oven. The loaves will require three hours to bake properly. Cover with paper for the first two hours. The dear old grandaunt from whom I got this ancient and honorable recipe had baked her “rye and Indian” for fifty years in the brick oven of a homestead two hundred years old. She covered her loaves with leaves from an oak near the door. The oak overshadowed a well dug in 1640. Steamed Boston brown bread Mix thoroughly a cup, each, of graham flour, wheat flour and corn-meal, and stir in a teaspoonful of salt. Warm together a cup of milk, in which is dissolved a small teaspoonful of baking soda, and a teacupful of molasses. Pour over the mixed flours and meal a cupful of boiling water, and then add the warmed milk and molasses. Beat hard and long, and turn into a greased pudding-mold with a closely-fitting top. Cook in an outer vessel of boiling water for three hours. Remove from the water, take the cover from the mold and set in the oven for ten or fifteen minutes, or until the bread is dry about the edges. Turn out, wrap in a napkin, and send to the table. “Salt-rising” bread (No. 1) (An old Virginia recipe) Dissolve a half-teaspoonful of salt in two cups of scalding water, and beat in gradually enough flour to make a very soft dough. Beat for ten minutes, cover and set in a very warm place for eight hours. Now stir a teaspoonful of salt into a pint of lukewarm milk and add enough flour to make a stiff batter before